The Keeper of the Walls (9 page)

“With Mark MacDonald, everything checks out all right. He's twenty-four, the older of two sons. His father is a doctor in Charlotte, North Carolina. There's considerable money from both sides of the family. Mark was educated at the Hill School in Pennsylvania, and at Princeton University—both excellent institutions. He worked as cub reporter on the
Clarion,
and apparently impressed the city editor. He then was given a by-line with the local society column. Now he's the Paris correspondent—quite a feat for someone working for a small city paper like the
Clarion.
”

“And?”

“Prince Mikhail Brasilov is a different story. His father is the legendary Ivan Vassilievitch Brasilov, founder of an empire of businesses in Kiev and Moscow. Everything he touched turned to gold. Mikhail was an only child. He grew into a prodigy, finishing the university with two degrees at the age of eighteen. He was always a carouser, however.” Marguery's nostrils twitched.

“Most of this is known territory. Please continue.”

“The Brasilovs came to France in'21. They were able to rebuild their financial position by fortifying the French sugar beet. They live on the Avenue de la Muette—quite sumptuously.”

“For God's sake!” Claude cried. “Will you get to the point, Marguery?”

The little man hesitated. “I've never asked before—but why do you need this information?”

Claude said, through tight lips: “It's a personal matter, Marguery. A family matter.”

“I asked only because, to touch such a high-placed, well-connected man as Prince Mikhail . . .”

“No one will ever know. You won't be linked to this.”

“There's only one black point I was able to discover. But it took me some time and not a little effort to uncover the facts. Prince Mikhail made a most unexpected marriage.”

Claude leaned forward, amazed.

“He got married two years ago, shortly after he came here.” He stopped, seeing the incredulous expression on Claude's face. Then, licking his thin red lips, he plunged ahead: “She's known as Jeanne Dalbret, one of the dancers in Mistinguett's revue,
Paris qui Danse.
”

“He's
still married?”

“I could find no divorce decree on file, Monsieur Claude.”

A
t the dinner
table
that night, Claire said brightly: “If we aren't very hungry, it's because Lily and I had
such a
charming guest for a well-furnished tea: Prince Mikhail Brasilov.”

Paul smiled at her above his double chin, but Claude sat up, suddenly tense. “Well done, my girl,” the father said.

“In fact, he invited us to attend a performance of the play
Romance.
The Russians really know how to charm people. But I was surprised to find out how
warm
he is.”

“They know how to charm, because they take us all for benighted idiots!” Claude said.

His father turned to look at him, taken aback. His mother said: “There's nothing supercilious about Prince Mikhail. You led me to believe—”

“I think it's splendid my girls are going to go to the theater!” Paul crooned. Lily thought it ironic, and half smiled. She could well remember how she'd begged and pleaded six months ago, and what her father had replied: “All this ridiculous acting is a waste of time and of hard-earned money. I'll be damned if I let you go, Claire!”

But suddenly Claude was standing up, trembling. “Lily,” he ordered. “There's a matter of some delicacy I must discuss at once with Mother and Father. Go to your room.”

Claire opened her mouth, but Paul glared at her across the table. He spoke up: “Lily, you heard your brother. Some things aren't for a young girl's ears.”

Lily rose, without looking at anyone, and started to walk away. She strode, without hesitation. It didn't mean anything to her that Claude had dismissed her so curtly. She didn't wish to waste her time listening to Claude's dissertations, anyway. At moments like these, she felt more than ever her alienation from her father and brother. She went into the sitting room, and sat, thinking. He wasn't exactly beautiful, but his large features fit in his wide-boned face, and his legs were so long, so powerful. He'd sat in
that
chair, talking of this and that, and she'd imagined herself alone with him, in a garden. Imagined his taking her hand, his pulling her toward him. Abruptly she stood up and went to the grand piano in the right-hand corner, and sat on the small stool. Her hands began to hit the keys, and there was a violence unleashed suddenly in the form of music, rich, cascading arias from Bizet. She didn't even notice when the pins slipped from her Psyche knot and the dark, glossy hair came tumbling down over her shoulders, magnificent and wild. She was angry, excited, oddly exhilarated, alone and apart.

In the dining room, Claire spoke out: “Claude, you have an extremely disagreeable manner when you speak to your sister.”

“What's all this about?” Paul demanded. He detested being interrupted during a meal.

“It's about Prince Mikhail. We have to stop considering him for Lily. He took advantage of our goodwill, of Mama's hospitality, to treat her like a common tramp!”

“I didn't see it,” Claire objected.

“Because you saw him only on the surface. He's a married man!”

Claire blinked, stunned. Claude said, his voice a reedy whisper: “He's married to a dance-hall girl he keeps hidden somewhere.”

“Then ... I shall have to find a polite way to decline the theater engagement,” Claire murmured.

Suddenly, Paul stood up, his double chin shaking like gelatin. “No,” he declared, narrowing his eyes. “You'll go. I want to see exactly how far this man will try to take us. You saw how he received us in his office, Claude—all arrogance, all superiority, as if we were scum to be pushed away with his foot. And why? Does my money smell any different from his? He's a tradesman, just like the rest of us, even with his fine aristocratic airs. This isn't Russia, and he shouldn't feel so confident. I'll catch him, and then, Claude, we'll crush him.”

Claire shivered, and closed her eyes.

M
isha was not overly
interested in the play. Certainly it was charming, but he'd seen his share of charming plays all over the European continent. He was dying for a cigarette, but the two women didn't smoke, and so he concentrated on watching them while they watched the stage.

Claire wore a fur coat of gray astrakhan trimmed with mink, and, in the box that Misha had rented, she had slipped the coat off, revealing a gown of soft beige silk, with wide sleeves and a high collar. He'd been looking forward to spending the evening with her, for she was a witty conversationalist: and so he'd been disappointed by her unusual reserve. But the girl was a dream. Her long hair had been swept into a topknot, but rebellious tendrils escaped charmingly over her ears and neck. She wore a tubular gown of white chiffon and a stole of white mink, with pearls on her ears and around her neck. She wasn't wearing makeup.

He watched her rapt attention, the small tongue that protruded between her parted lips—her wonder. It was painfully obvious that she wasn't used to going out. He felt protective, compassionate. All his life he'd given in to the need to protect the weak and the suffering. Just as easily he'd come to be known as ruthless because when he saw corruption, he sought to crush it without thought to his victims. In a game played outside the rules, Misha always won, for when someone played a dirty trick, he didn't realize that Misha could be dirtier.

At intermission, Claire excused herself to go to the powder room, and for the first time Misha found himself alone with Lily. She was embarrassed. She didn't dare to look at him. And so he said, gently, “Do I frighten you?”

She looked at him then, and smiled, coloring. “You're of a different world, Prince Mikhail. You're older, and you're foreign. I'm afraid my conversation is dull for you.”

“On the contrary. I see in you one of the most beautiful women in Paris. And you possess a rare talent: imagination. You're intelligent. It's fashionable to be shallow but you are not. You are worth spending time with—much time, mademoiselle.”

She looked down at her hands, pensive. It seemed incredible: the most beautiful woman in Paris. Only seven months ago she'd left the convent, where humility was considered the first quality to live by: to give up one's dreams to serve other people. The teachings of Christ. Self-abnegation. Was she destined to put aside her fancies in a supreme effort at helping others to fulfill theirs? Part of Lily rebelled against this. Another part accepted it as her fate, the way she'd always accepted the dicta of the Church, and its punishments for her sinful mind.

Claire was reappearing, and Misha stood up, politely. The play was starting again.

But this time, Lily hardly watched. Misha, observing her, wondered how much woman she was already. Lily sat with her head bowed, absorbed. Then, at one point, he caught her looking at his legs, at his hands as they lay clasped over his knees. She was staring at them as if in a trance, fascinated. He was suddenly touched: she
was
a woman, aware perhaps of her first man, and taken with the strangeness of the man-woman “thing,” for which she had no name yet.

The next day, he sent her a dozen red roses, with his compliments.

H
is father had told
him to clean up his life. Misha remembered an episode from his youth, in Moscow. He'd been an ace at billiards. But in this great city the billiard halls were set up in the most downtrodden, ne'er-do-well neighborhoods, and so Prince Ivan, who so rarely interfered in his son's life, had said to him: “I can't allow you to return there again.”

The game, however, was stronger for Misha than his father's reprimand. Like metal to a magnet, he'd felt himself drawn irresistibly to the pool halls. One evening he was so absorbed in his game, winning against clever opponents, that it was morning before he lifted his eyes from the felt table. And then his gaze had encountered a most unusual sight. Among the thieves and low-lives stood his father, in his top hat and tails, fresh from a formal dinner and ball, standing erect and incongruous, looking at his son. Misha had felt himself change color, and had dropped his cue and followed Prince Ivan out the door.

They'd never exchanged a single word about the episode. But Prince Ivan had made his point.

It wasn't the game, however, that had caused the most trouble in Misha's life. It had been women. As careful and meticulous as he was in his work, he couldn't handle his women. His private life was messy and disordered, overflowing with women of various ages and all sorts. It had always been this way.

In Moscow he'd been involved with a married woman, Varvara Trubetskaya, older than he by five exciting years. She'd been a society woman, the wife of a general. But she'd loved Misha so! She'd thrown her reputation to the winds in the hope that he would ask her to leave her husband and marry him. But that hadn't been in his plans.

And then the Bolsheviks had moved nearer, and the Brasilovs had pushed on to Kiev, to the safety of their refineries. As he had never actually broken with Varvara, she'd found a way to convince her husband to go to Kiev too. And they'd met each other.

Misha remembered the scandal. Even in those troubled times, when everyone had had only his own safety on his mind, when the rich were rich no longer and were afraid for their lives, the remnant of the upper crust had discussed Misha's shameful behavior with the general's wife.

The Bolsheviks had been coming closer and closer. The Brasilovs had fled. In the Crimea, by chance this time, he'd run into Varvara and her husband, on their way to Constantinople, too. He hadn't resisted the insistence of his married mistress, and they'd started all over again, practically under her husband's nose. And yet . . . for all their sexual exhilaration, he didn't think he'd ever
loved
Varvara. He'd never loved
any
woman.

He entered the quiet apartment, where Arkhippe had left two hall lights on to greet him. He loosened his tie, unbuttoned his crisp evening shirt. He was very tired. It had been one of those pleasant evenings at Cécile Sorel's. The actress had gathered to her Quai Voltaire Palace the cream of Parisian society. He'd enjoyed her guests, but at the end, as usual, they had bored him and pressed on his nerves. Now he poured himself an Armagnac and went to the silver mail tray.

It hit his eye and, a minute later, his stomach. The pale blue paper, lightly scented with Chanel No. 5. He'd introduced her to it. By an odd coincidence it was the perfume that Lily used, too. He'd have to change that. Misha tore the envelope open with suddenly clumsy fingers, and held the letter to the light.

H
is father had said
: “Clean up your life, my boy.” But how would he be able to do it with this new hitch? He'd all but pushed the consciousness of her existence out of his mind. The hasty wedding in Biarritz, during the “Russian season.” A wedding that had been a lark, a joke, because the gods had burned away his motherland; because, in the midst of despair, you had to be a clown, you had to spit at Fate. He'd regretted it as soon as he'd done it, and told her so. “We'll have to live in separate residences. You can stay my wife, because I never intend to marry again. But we won't make it public.”

Strangely enough, she'd accepted it, nodding with her proud head, tossing the mink stole over her shoulder in a sign of bravado—for she was a reckless adventurer like him, one who gambled on life, and lost well. He'd admired her for it, and because of this he'd treated her well. He'd let her live her life, but he'd gone to her in moments of tension, to drink from her the courage to continue, to persevere against all odds. She'd never asked for help, and had gone on to learn a whole new career, one of which he disapproved, but who was he to make a criticism? They were no longer in Moscow, where appearances mattered. They were in Paris during the Roaring Twenties, when women did far worse than to become dancers in a revue. She'd banked on the loveliness of her legs and on her hours of practice with her private ballet master from the Bolshoi—her hobby as a wealthy Muscovite matron.